Cam Newton needs N'Keal Harry.
He knows it.
As such, and as the leader of the Patriots offense these days, Newton had a chat with Harry following the second-year wide receiver's fumble on the goal line against the Dolphins in Sunday afternoon's season opener.
The chat was probably different than it might have been with another quarterback. Maybe different than it would have been if Tom Brady were still in New England.
"I spoke with N'Keal and let's just put a lot of things into perspective here," Newton explained during his Wednesday evening video conference with reporters. "Did he have a good game? Yes he did. I think that one play overshadowed the production the he did have. He bailed me out on a play, an inaccurate pass that he came down with and got the first down. He did pretty good in the run game. He had a couple of contested catches and all of that was kind of for naught because a lot of people just focused on the fumble."
Harry did have a career-high five catches on six targets for 39 yards in the win.
But that's not to say that Newton was excusing or accepting of the turnover. Nope.
"And granted, I'll be the first person to tell you, he knows – or he would be the first person to tell you that he knows that's unacceptable," Newton continued. "But obviously when you put things into perspective and call an apple an apple and a spade a spade, it was just one mistake. Him still being a young player trying to come into his own, things like that will happen, you just want them to be minimized as much as possible."
The quarterback went on to explain that he's seeing obvious growth from Harry, the kind of guy he has leaned on in the past and certainly sounds like he wants to lean on moving forward in New England.
"But he's making leaps and strides as everyone would expect them to be. He's growing up into his best self and for him, after chatting with him, he knows. He knows he has to make practice game-like and that's the only thing that you can imagine," Newton said. "The thing that makes me and N'Keal closer is I told him my spiel, obviously being in Carolina I've had a N'Keal in my life for as long as my career has existed. Being a high invested draft pick dating back to Kelvin Benjamin to Devin Funchess, me also being young at the time too, and investing in Curtis Samuel, DJ Moore, Christian McCaffrey, so it's nothing new to come on a team and you have a young talent at receiver and trying to morph him into the best player he can possibly be. And I know N'Keal is buying in, not only to my theory and methods but to the team's as well and plays like that are going to happen, we just hope it's the only time it will happen."
